Directed by: Zach Snyder
Distributed by: Warner Bros
Release Date: June 14, 2013
Rated: PG-13
Synopsis: A young itinerant worker is forced to confront his secret extraterrestrial heritage when Earth is invaded by members of his race. (Via IMDB)
Brian: Man of Steel makes 2006′s mediocre Superman Returns look like The Dark Knight. Hell, it makes Superman Returns look like Citizen Kane. Man of Steel is 2013′s big fat disappointment, a film that starts strong but devolves into a head-scratching mess of banal characters, endless exposition, and mindless action. And not just action, really, but a total assault on your senses. I’ve seen a lot of action movies over the years, but nothing has ever prepared me for the last hour of Man of Steel, which is so loud and exhausting in its non-stop carnage that it took lots of discipline not to get right up and walk out of the theater. I’m a big fan of the first two Superman movies with Christopher Reeve. Those movies have personality and charm and awe and wonder. Man of Steel is a near dead zone of imagination and creativity.
Shaunta: We didn’t see this movie together–but I wish we had. I would have loved to actually see Brian’s reaction. I’m usually the one who either really loves or really hates a movie. I watched it with my husband, and I didn’t have nearly the negative reaction Brian did. I was expecting something really, truly awful after his reaction, but it wasn’t that at all. Actually, for me, the first half of the movie worked really well. I could have watched an entire film about the destruction of Krypton. I thought that Russell Crowe was great as Jor-el and I loved learning more about Superman’s beginnings. Superman has always had a messianic twist, I guess, but it was really highlighted in this film and I thought that was really interesting. Not a dead zone of imagination and creativity at all.
Brian: I’ve been excited for Man of Steel for months. The ads made the movie look exciting and a lot of fun, and I trusted that Christopher Nolan’s participation would ensure that the movie expanded the mind at the same time it engaged the imagination, the way his Batman movies do. I couldn’t have been more wrong, and more set up for disappointment. The piece of the puzzle I didn’t consider going in was that Man of Steel was directed by Zach Snyder. This is the director of 300, Watchmen, and Sucker Punch, three movies with lots of loud, big, empty action, so if I had been paying more attention, I might have known what I was in for. This guy comes from the school is More is Better, and Lots, Lots More is a Lot, Lot Better. By the time the third giant battle commences between Superman and Zod, I just started shaking my head. This isn’t a movie to enjoy, but endure.
Shaunta: There were two real problems for The Man of Steel. First, Amy Adams was badly miscast as Lois Lane. From the moment she asked where she’d be able to ‘tinkle’ in her first scene, she was just–really wrong. I think that if they’d let her be mature, even played up the fact that the actress is eight years older than the actor, instead of infantlizing her, the whole movie would have been much stronger. As it was, I actually cringed when they finally kissed. No effort was put into building up their chemistry at all. The second real problem was a total lack of restraint. It was like some geeky boys got together and came up with every possible way that Superman and Zod could destroy things, and then used EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM in one film. Like with Amy Adams as Lois Lane, the very first heavy action scene between Superman and Zod set it off on the wrong foot. Superman destroys his own hometown, just so that he could look Zod in the face and say “don’t threaten my mother?” Really? There were no consequences for the level of destruction–I mean, Manhattan was pretty much flattened. Even a billion-dollar space station thing. Superman’s whole thing is self-sacrifice for the good of the human race–back to the whole messianic thing. The film showed him making no effort at all to mitigate the huge amount of damage, then he showed no remorse at all for causing it. Giant NYC skyscrapers were collapsing. Thousands of people would have died in that destruction. We know that. It was in bad taste. Which was a total shame, because this movie had so much potential.
Brian: So the action is a bit much, but what else didn’t I like about Man of Steel? I actually liked the opening origin sequence with Russell Crowe as Jor-El. Although a bit overlong, there is some genuine excitement and emotion in those opening minutes. Some viewers have criticized the use of flashbacks in the film, but I welcomed these quieter scenes, with Clark growing up and engaging with his parents and the kids at school. The scenes with Pa Kent (Kevin Costner), for example, work fairly well (although the tornado scene is all wrong). But these moments amount to maybe 30 minutes in a 150-minute movie, and those other 120 minutes just doesn’t work. Let’s start with Henry Cavill, the new Superman. He looks the part, he’s hot, he’s built. And he’s a total stiff. Essentially a robot could’ve given a more complex performance. There’s never a flash of excitement to the character in this film, he’s just doom and gloom the entire time. Amy Adams, four-time Oscar nominee Amy Adams, feels so out of place as Lois Lane it’s downright awkward. She’s too good of an actress to just look at things with wonder for a movie’s entire running time, and don’t get me started on the chemistry she has with Cavill. Not only is their love story criminally underwritten, she feels more like his older sister than a potential love interest (in real life, she’s almost 10 years older than Cavill). Michael Shannon is perfect casting for Zod, but he just walks through the whole movie screaming. And as for any of the other actors, there’s not much to say, because attention to character development is very limited here. By the time we get to the destruction in the end, we haven’t come to care about anyone, so there’s no sense of urgency, no real stakes, to anything that’s happening.
Shaunta: I didn’t find Henry Cavill wooden or stiff at all. Not any more than any other Superman I’ve ever seen, including comic books, anyway. Even though he’s not American, he has exactly the kind of corn-fed, hard-jawed, all-American white-boy looks that define Superman. It’s like he was genetically engineered to play Superman. Seriously. I loved the flashbacks to his childhood. I really loved the way that the film showed some of his childhood bullies grown up. I loved the dynamic between young Clark and his Earth father (Kevin Costner.) There were several scenes with Clark and his Earth mom that cracked me up–she kept feeling up his big muscles. It was hilarious. There was more chemistry between the two of them than there was between Clark and Lois. There was nothing robotic about Henry Cavill for me. He has an old-fashioned kind of hairy-chested, 1950s sexiness that is — not robotic at all. I’m just saying. Of course, he didn’t have a chance to develop the character of Superman as well as I would have liked, because all of a sudden he’s bent on destroying the world in the last half of the movie. That soured him for me. But, I feel like there’s some real potential for a second movie that has more restraint. Too late for a better Lois Lane, though, which is a real shame.
Brian: Ultimately my main issue with Man of Steel is that it’s a film that assaults the imagination, rather than feeds it. It saddens me that for many kids and teenagers Man of Steel will be their introduction to Superman, because it’s been done so much better many years ago with the first two Christopher Reeve films. I’m not a summer movie blockbuster snob, not by any means. The Dark Knight is one of my favorite films of the last ten years. Last year I loved The Avengers. Iron Man 3 was a load of fun. Man of Steel is not on the level of these movies. It’s visually competent, has lots of action. But there’s no sense of fun to be had, no sense of wonder to anything that unfolds on the screen. In the end, Man of Steel lacks a soul.
Shaunta: The soul is there. You just have to dig through the rubble to find it. Do a better job with the sequel guys. Come on. (Also, don’t bother waiting around for an extra scene at the end. There isn’t one.)